triskellian

I cooked this last night for nickeyb, sesquipedality, a_llusive, kissifa and LadyInRed, at least two of whom asked for the recipe. There isn't one, but under the cut is roughly how I made it, although this is one of those very forgiving dishes - more or less of anything (time, temperature, ingredients, whatever) will not hurt it. I think it would benefit from the addition of dumplings (to be added at the point it comes out of the oven), but I couldn't be bothered to make any in the end.

Veggie casserole for six

Ingredients

One butternut squash
Four onions
Lots of garlic
One small punnet mushrooms
Three sweet potatoes
Three leeks
Lentils (puy will retain their shape and bite; many other sorts will soften and start to disintegrate into the stew; I used some of each, but can't remember what the non-puy sort were)
Two tins tomatoes
Veg stock
Red wine
Thyme
Sage (leathellin's dried sage, actually, although other sorts would probably also work ;-)
Olive oil

Method

Chop squash and bake with olive oil and sage at about 220C. Meanwhile:

Put quite a lot of oil in a big casserole dish on the lowest heat you can; crush garlic and add to oil. Leave to infuse on a low heat while chopping other veg. Then:

Tip out some of the garlicky oil, leaving most of the garlic and enough oil to start frying onions (save the rest of the oil for adding later if the pan gets dry). Turn the heat up to medium and fry onions with thyme and sage. After a while, add mushrooms and leeks. When they look more-or-less done add the sweet potatoes, and fry them for a bit. Add more of the reserved garlicky oil whenever you need to.

Check on the squash. If it's done, or nearly done, take it out of the oven and add it to the pan (leave the oven on). If it's still mostly raw, leave it for a bit longer.

Add the tinned tomatoes, about a quarter of a bottle of wine, and some veg stock (I used concentrated liquid stock and some water). You want the liquid level only a little lower than the veg level, so add more wine if in doubt - too much is better than too little ;-) Add lentils (no need to pre-soak).

Cover it and put in the oven for at least an hour. Then take it out, uncover it, and put it on the hob for half an hour to reduce the liquid and make sure the lentils are cooked.